samhill wrote:Don`t do it Mr. President its a trap, now they are saying your afraid to, if you go they will say that you should be in D.C. running the country. No matter what you do its wrong, maybe you should just vacation on your ranch( scratch that "wrong Pres.")on second thought there is no place you can go that won`t be wrong may as well just eat worms.

Or he could multi-task by using the Al Gore invention without having to leave the semen stained Oval Office.

Oh, I'm sure Bush had it cleaned and then proceeded to drool all over it.

SMITTY wrote:It's easy to tell that none of you left leaners watch Fox. Like the video said, it appears nobody can tell the difference between a straight news broadcast, & an OPINION broadcast. Whenever Fox interviews a lib, they give them equal time, as they do a conservative. How is that the mouthpiece of the Republican party? Straight news during the day, opinion at night.

Facts are facts -- Fox is the most popular news outlet among all political leanings. You don't get that following by lying.

Yes, you get that popular by telling people what they want to hear; Nothing is our fault, it's the gays and the immigrants. Bush made this country safer, and we're doing a noble thing in the Middle East. Government programs are a bad thing, even if they people's lives better. Big business is your friend. Global warming is just a "Theory." Being born American is an accomplishment. The answer to a recession is to cut taxes... Really? And as the Reagan cheerleaders will tell you: DEFICITS DON'T MATTER. Wow. Sure blew the snot out of that argument in the last few years haven't we?

It's the same way the Republicans get millions of Americans to vote against they're own self interests in every election. Being popular does not make it real news. It's Rupert Murdock's bullhorn, nothing less and nothing more.

That about hits the nail on the head as far as Fox goes. People generally like to have something to point at and blame, and Fox "news" provides a great avenue for that. I find it kind of comical that we just got through an election in which the D's not only won the white house, but BOTH the house and senate, and yet some people point to fox news' ratings as some sort of sign that the country is going in a completely different direciton. The fact of the matter is that 1) People with brains don't sit around the tube rooting for their favorite channel like 14 year olds at a high school football game (but Fox newsers do), and 2) since ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, BBC......to infinity are all "liberal", then all the "liberals" (who are actually mostly moderates) are going to be split up between all of those channels. The nuts flock to fox, while the other 85% of the country is distributed between all the other channels. See the past election results if any of you doubt this theory. It's a great business strategy, I'll give Murdock credit for being able to line his pockets off of the fear and insecurity of that slice of the population.

Why all this discussion of who watches what cable news programs? What does that have to do with anything? We're discussing whether or not O will appear and why he should or should not, and all I keep hearing is "Fox is the most watched..." Who cares?

Look, if there was a network called "Burning coal is destroying the earth" network, would any of you want to appear on it? Before you get all gung-ho and tell us how "Oh yeah I'd love to straighten them out!," remember that you'd be behind enemy lines, you'd be cut off constantly, everything you said would be taken out of context. FOR EXAMPLE, the mod might say "So you admit burning coal emits sulfur." (you'd look stupid to deny it, it's a well-known fact). You'd say "Yes, but..." and be cut off with "So even though YOU ADMIT that burning coal emits sulfur, you still burn it! You hate the earth!" So the audience watching who hated you to begin with can now run to all his other coal-hating friends and say "Oh yeah he admitted that coal emits sulfur, but he doesn't care, he burns it anyway."

This overly-simplistic exhaggeration shows EXACTLY what would happen to O if he appeared. Absolutely nothing he said could possibly be correct, and the audience who by in large hates the man to begin with (due to the faulty information they've been force-fed) would use all the skewed information to hate him even more. Much in the way this is squawked across every conservative outlet, that since O won't appear he must be afraid or have something to hide, and all the conservatives flock to the bird bath and drink the kool-aid. Sillyness.

Kevin H wrote:Why all this discussion of who watches what cable news programs? What does that have to do with anything? We're discussing whether or not O will appear and why he should or should not, and all I keep hearing is "Fox is the most watched..." Who cares?

Maybe it's just me but I think it's relevant to point out the the Pres. won't appear on Fox which happens to be the most watched by far cable news show. I don't have the time now to look for the stats as I have to go to work but I'm pretty sure it's also well ahead of the networks in viewership also. Put that in your kool aid glass and drink it.

Notice, Kevin, that neither of the above posts responds to the substance of your point that it's stupid to allow yourself to be interviewed by an organization you have concluded has decided simply to oppose and try to ambush you.

In fact, you could ask my old friend, former Gov. Bob Ehrlich of MD, a Republican, who refused to give interviews as Governor to, IIRC, the Baltimore Sun, on exactly the same grounds.

The foxtrotters know that the Pres. would be considered wrong if he was even allowed to fully answer a question so they just change the subject as to how popular fox is. Thats exactly how fox conducts its reporting.

"Are you suggesting we take our marching orders from Al Qaeda?" That is word twisting, ad homonym, appealing to the emotions of the audience rather than their reason: The sole armaments of the modern little-r republican party. Appalling behaviour for someone who calls themselves a reporter.

stockingfull wrote:For me, while I'm glad to see that political discussion didn't cease here with Devil's exile and my summer break, I don't plan to engage in it here this season. My reasons are above.

Jeez it's great to have you back! Especially with that new commitment not to engage in the political discussion this season. If I recall, that commitment lasted about 3 minutes in the "Rush" thread. That's ok. I didn't believe it when I read it anyway.

stockingfull wrote:Notice, Kevin, that neither of the above posts responds to the substance of your point that it's stupid to allow yourself to be interviewed by an organization you have concluded has decided simply to oppose and try to ambush you.In fact, you could ask my old friend, former Gov. Bob Ehrlich of MD, a Republican, who refused to give interviews as Governor to, IIRC, the Baltimore Sun, on exactly the same grounds.

I live in Maryland and subscribe to the Baltimore Sun. Even though it's a blatantly biased hack paper, I read it daily as it is pretty much the only game in town. Plus I need the newsaper to put on the table when we are eating steamed crabs. The Sun editorial board hated the fact that a Republican got elected gov and it wouldn't have mattered if it was mother theresa, they would have set upon her and tried to destroy her. They constantly lambsted everything Ehrlich did. When Ehrlich proposed slots as a tool to help with Md's financial, you would have thought he proposed prostituting 12 year old school girls. Now that the boy wonder O'malley is in office(a dem of course) and he has proposed slots, why it's as if he has found a cure for cancer. By the way the Sun is so small now, that it takes a weeks worth of newspapers to actually eat crabs.